Human Exceptionalism in the Climate Crisis: Lessons from Val Plumwood’s ‘Meeting the Predator’ 40 years on

In 1985, during a trip to Kakadu, environmentalist and philosopher Val Plumwood, was canoeing when she was attacked by an enormous saltwater crocodile. Grabbed by the thigh, Plumwood survived three death rolls leaving her severely wounded and crawling to safety. It was this near-death experience which inspired her essay “Meeting the Predator” in which she explores the fundamental idea of anthropocentrism, or human exceptionalism. Describing her belief that Western society has created a separation between humanity and the natural ecosystems we depend on. Nearly 40 years on, in the age of climate catastrophe, reflecting on her groundbreaking essay provides insights into our seeming inability to act in accordance with the level of crisis we are now facing. With new coal and gas projects, and abandoned climate targets — while our governments walk back promise after promise after promise, Plumwood shows why we are still unable to understand the existential nature of the threat we’re causing.

Plumwood is weak and exposed in her canoe, and still struggles to understand her innate vulnerability. Not until she is in the crocodile’s jaws does she fully realise, with an existential indignation, her true place in the ecosystem. She had subconsciously developed the belief that her status as human would exempt her from the natural cycles of life and death. Through her disbelief that she could be eaten, Plumwood experienced a perceived, yet false, ethical boundary being crossed. 

In the moment of the attack, Plumwood describes having travelled “through the eye of the crocodile” as she journeys into a “parallel universe” — a truer reality in which she was the life sustaining nutrients. She was food. Particularly in the Western world, as humans have risen to ecosystem supremacy, any predator with the potential to kill and eat humans has been driven to extinction or run out of human areas. The idea of human as prey has become wholly unnatural in our minds — this is the discussion Plumwood puts forward. As we become isolated from the natural cycles of prey and predator, of death and decay, we fail to realise that these are the cycles on which we depend for our livelihoods. When a person is killed by an animal, this is seen as a form of moral trespass. We anthropomorphise a perceived ethical misdeed of a predator, giving an ethical weight to an animal we previously wouldn’t have credited with any sense of morality, proceeding to then criminalise and prosecute. The concept of a man-eater — a predator with a specific taste for human flesh — is a cultural preoccupation, perpetuated through films such as ‘Jaws’ (1975) and ‘The Ghost and the Darkness’ (1996). The natural predator becomes a monster, a grossly exaggerated villain.

For decades, the polar bear has served as a quasi-ambassador for the impacts of climate change, sad and scrawny to remind us of our role in Arctic sea ice decline. However, let it not be forgotten that the polar bear is also a predator. In 2022, researcher Karyn Rode and her colleagues published a paper in Global Ecology and Conservation demonstrating that polar bears are being forced to spend more time on land and are moving further inland due to habitat loss caused by climate change, making the risk of human/bear conflict more likely. 

Tragically, only months later in 2023, in the Inupiat community of Wales, Alaska, Summer Myomick and her one-year-old son Clyde Ongtowasruk were mauled to death by a polar bear. For Alaska, these were the first and second recorded deaths by polar bear in over 30 years. 

The idea of ‘the predator’ serves a dual purpose. It can serve as a metaphor for the impacts of climate change — rising seas are the predator, extreme heat and drought are the predator, the Black Summer fires were the predator, the Lismore floods were the predator. However, it also describes a very literal, physical, claw-bearing, jaw snapping predator. In order to realise the true nature of our place in the ecosystem, as food—humans will need to join Plumwood in her real reality, we too must travel through the eye of the crocodile. 

In the decades since it was first written, ‘Meeting the Predator’ has become a seminal text of environmental philosophy. The significance and importance of Plumwood’s work has been well recognised — why, then, has it not been acted upon?  

I put forward two hypotheses. 

The first reason is simply that thinking about death is hard. On a personal level, human exceptionalism makes fully understanding our inevitable decay difficult. Human exceptionalism fuels and massages our egos — the belief that we are special simply feels nice and realising it’s fallacy can really bruise. The second is that the uneven distribution of power and resources fuels this sense of exceptionalism. It is the poor, Indigenous and climate vulnerable who are dying from the effects of climate change, who face the imminent threat. For those of us in the West, in the middle and upper classes in major cities, meeting this predator is delayed. We have the privilege to develop a position of apathy to the climate crisis, showing a willingness to sacrifice the poor and climate vulnerable to the predator in order to delay the ultimate realisation of our innate vulnerability. 

There are ultimately two ways to join Plumwood in her alternate universe, to become a member of real reality. The first is to heed the warning of others, to learn from those who, like Plumwood, have met the predator, learned their lesson, and lived to tell the tale. For most of us who are lucky enough to have not yet experienced it first-hand, having “met the predator” will not be a fixed state and rather something which we need consistent reminders of. Learning this lesson can take time, however it is imperative we do as the second method is to come face to face with the literal predator for ourselves. So, look around, listen up and begin to take notice — before the jaws snap shut.